UHNM international nurses celebrate OSCE success

International nurses from University Hospitals of North Midlands are celebrating after officially becoming registered nurses in the UK.

More than 200 international nurses have been recruited to work at Royal Stoke University Hospital and County Hospital in Stafford since June 2021 and on 20 December a celebration event took place to congratulate the latest cohort of nurses who recently passed their Objective Structured Clinical Exam (OSCE).

Certificates were presented at the celebration event by Tracy Bullock, UHNM Chief Executive, she said: “I am so proud of our overseas nurses for achieving their OSCE’s and would wish to congratulate them all.  Their hard work and dedication has been recognised and it is fantastic that they are now fully part of our nurse registrant family at UHNM.”

She added: “Once again I want to say a big thank you to them all for choosing UHNM and I would also like to take the opportunity to welcome this latest cohort of overseas nurses to UHNM who were able to observe and take part in these celebrations.”

The international nurses, who are from India, Saudi Arabia, Jamaica, Guyana, Zimbabwe, Kuwait and Qatar, arrived as qualified nurses in their own country but are required to complete an OSCE in order to become an NMC (Nursing and Midwifery Council) recognised nurse in the UK. The latest cohort takes the total number of international nurses recruited to work at UHNM since 2021 to 217 nurses.

Stella Underwood, UHNM International Nurse Lead, said: “We are very proud of all of our international nurses and wanted to celebrate their OSCE success. We have welcomed more than 200 nurses so far from all across the world and we are grateful that they chose UHNM as a place to work. We work very hard to ensure that they have a good experience at UHNM and are also very grateful to all the clinical areas for supporting their international nurses so well.

“We look forward to welcoming many more international nurses over the next 12 months.”